Modern Times (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Those Criterion people really know what they're doing. The box art is beautiful, and so is the booklet and the menu screen. Plenty of special features - basically what was in the 2-disc DVD put out by MK2 - that are all worthwhile, and then there is the movie itself. Chaplin's Modern Times is a classic, which is a cliche term but the only one that fits. It is still hilarious, still beautiful, still clever, and still relevant. The Hi-Def transfer that was done for the blu-ray is a piece of art in itself. The images are as crisp as any black-and-white footage shot a decade ago, but this was filmed 7 decades ago. Amazing.

Caught between the cog wheels???

If you are suffering from work woes, this film is a great one to watch. A co-worker at my last job recommended this film to me. We worked for one of those genome companies, some of us working in a production capacity, doing the same repetitive tasks ad nauseum. The, (in real life), multi-talented Chaplin in this film is a simple-minded factory worker who spends his day going through the same motions over and over again. He does get lunch breaks, but of course his day at work is not without its mishaps. Funny that a 70 year old film about modern times is still not dated.

This film was made in 1936 during the Great Depression, a time when money and bread were scarce, many people feeling the effects. The story line for this movie reveals some of these circumstances, but as Chaplin lives through them, as when he is forced to drink rum bursting out of casks shot by robbers of a department store, one of whom was a previous co-factoryworker, you can't help but laugh, and as the song says, 'just smile'.

Modern times was a smart comedy in the previous years to WW2.
Charlot made raptures images in several sequences.
Our unlucky or disadapted little man , definitively wasn{t made for working with the industrial process. This kinetic introduction in the middle of the complex mecahnism of machine systems is a issue to develop unforgettable laughable situations. The sense of alienation in front the no ending belt , causes in him an insane loss of the reality. And the machine who feeds you without waste of time for your employers is a classic.
Obviously Charlot inspired himself in Metropolis, the bitter nightmare of Fritz Lang from 1927. (Watch for instance for the employer who works around the machine control) .
So our beloved anti hero goes out from this the factory to the hospital and over and over he tries to get a job but he fails , by one reason or another.
In the middle of the film will appear a deep inspiration. The eternally beauty Paulette Godard represents exactly that weird mix teenager-woman who will work out as link for him later.
He is a guy with good feelings. He acts always as humanity benefactor but the long arm of the fate runs behind him and the results are not succesful.
The sequences in the dinner hall with the chicken that never comes to the impatient client is a masterpiece. Literally it's a funny coreography dance in the purest sense of the word.
Smile ; no matter what's wrong with you. We'll keep ahead , overcoming all the possible obstacles.
A remarkable film and one of the landmark pictures of this timeless genius.
Haven't you seen it? Make yourself a favour and buy it as a gift for you or your wife or fiancee or kids. This film will never dissapoint you , at least in the next three hundred years.